The present invention relates generally to bottle manufacturing systems, and more particularly to, bottle manufacturing hopper systems.
Bottle manufacturers strive to use bottles in their system that are substantially free of defects. However, present bottle manufacturing systems typically experience defects in their bottles that arise due to how the bottles are loaded into the system. For example, a present bottle loading system is a silo bottle loading system as depicted in FIG. 1. A silo system, similar to grain elevators, feeds bottles at the top of silo 20 and removes the bottles at the bottom of silo 20 via a belt conveyor 22. Reference numeral 24 depicts the potential fill point for silo 20. Such a system experiences the disadvantage of defects arising from bottles at the bottom of the silo being crushed from the weight of the bottles above. Moreover, bottles occasionally experience dents due to the fall from the top of the silo to the bottom of the silo.
FIG. 2 depicts another present approach to loading bottles in a bottle manufacturing process. This present approach loads bottles from bulk storage 30 into a belt conveyor 32 via a loader belt 34. Bottles are fed into a bottle manufacturing application via conveyor system 36. In this approach, bottles are loaded at the upstream end 38 of belt conveyor 32. One disadvantage with this approach is that with respect to loading efficiency, bottles typically do not form a pile at the downstream end 40 of belt conveyer 32. The bottles are in a substantially flat non-pile arrangement which diminishes the storage advantages of a pile arrangement. The present invention overcomes the aforementioned disadvantages as well as other disadvantages.
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, an object loader system is provided for loading objects from storage into an object processing application. A first conveyor receives the objects from storage, and a second conveyor receives the objects from the first conveyor system at a predetermined location. A sensor determines detection of objects approximately relative to the first conveyor. The first conveyor conveys the objects to the second conveyor based upon the determined detection by the sensor.
For a more complete understanding of the invention, its objects and advantages, reference should be made to the following specification and the accompanying drawings.